Out of Sight is a so-called “pure” computer composition, which means that all the musical material is produced directly in a digital studio without any analog modifications. The piece is part of the multimedia work Floden av Glas (The River of Glass) (earlier called Suburban Night) and functions together with dancers and slide-projections. The purpose of the composition (apart from its musical and dramatic function in the multimedia work) has been to use and integrate a wide register of the sound expressions of the computer in a compositional entity, compared with the emphasizing of certain qualities and characters which is common in many of the computer music produced up till now.

Out of Sight was realized in 1981 at the Computer Studio of EMS (Stockholm, Sweden).

Premiere

• December 8, 1981, Concert, Kulturhuset, Stockholm (Sweden)

Awards

• Mention, Digital Music Prize, 12th Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition 1984, Bourges (Cher, France)

Musique douze is an attempt to oppose instrumental sounds to their electronic equivalents, and thus to apply different consequent functions to specific sequences. One might say that the electronic parts have a more linear function because of their static character while the instrumental sounds undergo intricate and rapid changes.

[source: Réseaux des arts médiatiques]

The composers write that this piece, “is built up of sounds from a number of different acoustic instruments, computer-processed and then re-mixed in the studios of EMS (Institute for Electroacoustic Music in Sweden) in Stockholm… we tried out a particular acoustic idea, that of a continually varying acoustic space, where no sound stays at any fixed point. Anchorings / Arrows may be seen as a tribute to music, anchored in music’s history but, we hope, also pointing forwards to the wonderfully mysterious and mythical future.”

[source: Réseaux des arts médiatiques]

Awards

• 1st prize, Studio Electroacoustic Music Prize, 21th Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition 1993, Bourges (Cher, France)
• Honorable Mention, Computer Music, Prix Ars Electronica 1993, Linz (Austria)

Premiere

• October 1, 1981, Concert, Berwaldhallen — Sverige Radio, Stockholm (Sweden)